Book club + Andrea Levy | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/series/bookclub+andrea-levy
Indexen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2015Tue, 31 Mar 2015 22:49:44 GMT2015-03-31T22:49:44Zen-gbGuardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2015The Guardianhttp://assets.guim.co.uk/images/guardian-logo-rss.c45beb1bafa34b347ac333af2e6fe23f.pnghttp://www.theguardian.com
Guardian book club podcast: Andrea Levyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2011/jan/31/book-club-podcast-andrea-levy
The writer explains how Small Island was driven by a wish to write about her parents' experience as immigrants, and that of the white British who met them <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2011/jan/31/book-club-podcast-andrea-levy">Continue reading...</a>FictionAndrea LevyBooksCultureMon, 31 Jan 2011 15:01:27 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2011/jan/31/book-club-podcast-andrea-levyChristopher Furlong/Getty ImagesThe writer Andrea Levy. Photograph: Christopher FurlongJohn Mullan2011-01-31T15:01:27ZSmall Island by Andrea Levyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/29/book-club-andrea-levy-island
Week four: readers' responses<p>Jane Austen used to satisfy the curiosity of friends and family by telling them what would happen to favourite characters after the novels in which they appeared had ended. When she came to the Guardian Book Club to talk about <em>Small Island</em>, Andrea Levy was asked to do the same. Near the end of the novel, a baby, called Michael, is born: what are his future relationships with the novel's four main characters (and narrators)? We had the author with us – so now we could find out.</p><p>&quot;A lot of people who have read the book have asked what happens next,&quot; Levy admitted. She even confessed to spinning some easy after-stories – in which Hortense and Queenie stay in contact, while Queenie separates from bitter Bernard – to satisfy persistent inquiries. But one member of the audience insisted the question of the child's fate was prompted by the novel's historical texture. She calculated baby Michael would be &quot;exactly my age&quot;, and argued that he would surely want to know who his father was. Wasn't such inquisitiveness the norm now?</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/29/book-club-andrea-levy-island">Continue reading...</a>Andrea LevyBooksCultureSat, 29 Jan 2011 00:05:50 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/29/book-club-andrea-levy-islandEamonn McCabe/GuardianAndrea Levy. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the GuardianEamonn McCabe/GuardianAndrea Levy. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the GuardianJohn Mullan2011-01-29T00:05:50ZSmall Island by Andrea Levyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/22/book-club-week-three-small-island
Week three: Andrea Levy on how her book emerged through her own family history<p>I hadn't realised I was starting a novel, I&nbsp;thought I was just being curious about my own family history when, in my 40s, I finally got my mum to tell me about her experiences of emigrating from Jamaica to Britain. She always claimed that I was never interested in her past when I was younger. But the way I remember it, neither she nor my dad ever seemed to want to talk about their lives in Jamaica, or about why in 1948 they made the momentous decision to leave that island to come to another. Whatever the truth, that silence was finally breached and my mother, reluctantly, began to speak to me about her life before I was born. I was gripped from the start as those two familiar parents of mine began to emerge as fully rounded human beings with an amazing story to tell.</p><p>My dad had died in the 1980s, but I remember him mentioning, almost in passing, that he had sailed to this country on a ship called the Empire Windrush. Over the next decade or so the name of that ship kept cropping up – in TV documentaries, books, newspaper articles. By the mid-90s there was even talk of the &quot;Windrush generation&quot;. The arrival of that ship in 1948, with its 492 West Indian migrants looking for work and betterment in the mother country had become an important moment in our recent history – a point at which British society began to change. And he was one of the pioneers. My Dad!</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/22/book-club-week-three-small-island">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAndrea LevySat, 22 Jan 2011 00:06:13 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/22/book-club-week-three-small-islandAndrea Levy2011-01-22T00:06:13ZSmall Island by Andrea Levy, week two: a novel in monologueshttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/15/book-club-small-island-week-two
Week two: a novel in monologues<p><em>Small Island</em> is a novel divided into monologues. Its arrangement of different points of view is reminiscent of other novels structured in this way: Julian Barnes's <em>Talking It Over</em> and <em>Love, etc</em>, Graham Swift's <em>Last Orders</em>, or Nick Hornby's <em>A Long Way Down</em>. In all these, the heading of each chapter gives the name of the speaker.</p><p>The technique was pioneered by a modernist classic: William Faulkner's <em>As I Lay Dying</em>. Virginia Woolf used it – in a manner that turned narration into a form of introspection – in <em>The Waves</em>. It is a good example of a narrative technique that might once have been disconcertingly experimental but has become mainstream.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/15/book-club-small-island-week-two">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureAndrea LevySat, 15 Jan 2011 00:05:30 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/15/book-club-small-island-week-twoJohn Mullan2011-01-15T00:05:30ZSmall Island by Andrea Levyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/08/small-island-andrea-levy-bookclub
Week one: the back story<p>The opening sentence of the back-cover blurb for the paperback edition of Andrea Levy's <em>Small Island</em> is misleading: &quot;It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war.&quot; Though, after a brief prologue, the novel does indeed open in 1948, in London, and ends only a few weeks later, most of the book in fact describes what has happened to its main characters before this time. The first sentence of the first chapter epitomises the narrative's gravitational pull: &quot;It brought it all back to me.&quot; This is Hortense, newly arrived in London from Jamaica, standing at the front door of the shabby lodging house in Earls Court where her husband, Gilbert, is staying. Seeing the big front door and the bell push (which does not work), she remembers her boastful friend Celia, back in Jamaica: &quot;Hortense, in England I will have a big house with a bell at the front door and I will ring the bell.&quot; Celia, of course, does not quite understand what a doorbell is for.</p><p>In 1948, in a grim London winter, Hortense and Gilbert meet up again, a husband and wife whose marriage has been arranged only to secure Hortense's passage to England. The novel's other two main characters are their English landlady, Queenie, and Bernard, Queenie's bigoted husband, who arrives back from wartime service to find &quot;coons&quot; renting rooms in his house. The conflicts between these four are the stuff of the novel – conflicts as much within the two marriages as between the Jamaican and the English characters. But the drama of the moment is shaped by the past, so the narrative keeps withdrawing to earlier times. The story is told entirely by these four characters: in sections headed &quot;1948&quot; they take turns to narrate, but these alternate with much longer narrative sections labelled simply &quot;Before&quot;, in which we get what we have come to call the &quot;back story&quot; of each of the four.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/08/small-island-andrea-levy-bookclub">Continue reading...</a>Andrea LevyFictionBooksCultureSat, 08 Jan 2011 00:08:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/08/small-island-andrea-levy-bookclubMurdo MacleodAndrea Levy ... 'A novel about the barriers of racial prejudice'. Photograph: Murdo MacleodMurdo MacleodAndrea Levy ... 'A novel about the barriers of racial prejudice'. Photograph: Murdo MacleodJohn Mullan2011-01-08T00:08:00ZSmall Island by Andrea Levyhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/dec/23/andrea-levy-book-club
Andrea Levy will be in conversation with John Mullan at Kings Place on 24 January<p><strong>Date:</strong> Monday 24 January<br /><strong>Time: </strong>7.00pm<br /><strong>Venue: </strong>Hall One<br /><strong>Price:</strong> &pound;9.50</p><p>Andrea Levy will talk to John Mullan about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/feb/14/featuresreviews.guardianreview10">Small Island</a>. Set in 1948, the novel is narrated by four different characters – Gilbert and Hortense, a married couple newly arrived in London from Jamaica, Queenie, their English landlady and her husband, Bernard. A comic and touching story about the first wave of West Indian immigration to Britain, exploring themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, it won both the Orange and the Whitbread prizes in 2004 and was later adapted for the small screen by the BBC. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/dec/23/andrea-levy-book-club">Continue reading...</a>Andrea LevyFictionBooksCultureThu, 23 Dec 2010 13:00:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/dec/23/andrea-levy-book-clubPRAndrea Levy.PRAndrea Levy.Guardian Staff2010-12-23T13:00:00ZSmall Island: dream sequenceshttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview5
John Mullan analyses Andrea Levy's Whitbread-winning Small Island. Week four: dream sequences<p>At a key moment in Small Island, Andrea Levy gives over a chapter to a character's description of a dream that he has had. Three years after the war's end, Bernard has returned to his London home and to Queenie, the wife who had supposed him killed in action. Queenie's account of his reappearance makes clear enough her private feelings. &quot;Of course I had to ask Bernard if he was staying... It was his house.&quot; She insists that they sleep in separate rooms, and locks her door when she goes to bed. He blankly accepts the refusal of connubial affection and is roused to strong emotion only by the discovery that she has taken in &quot;coloured&quot; lodgers. &quot;Couldn't you have got decent lodgers for the house? Respectable people?&quot;</p><p>This is what Bernard is like to his wife: an unwelcome ghost come back to life, spouting angry nonsense. The chapter that follows her account hands narration over to him, but as a dream sequence. &quot;Funny dream. Odd.&quot; In bed with Queenie, he hears &quot;a Jap plane... Probably a Zero&quot; flying above. &quot;I'm aware he's coming for me.&quot; Slowly the bedroom door begins opening and he's there. &quot;The Jap.&quot; He is a character from wartime propaganda cartoons. &quot;Little. Big glasses. Squinting eyes, buck teeth, ears like two jug handles.&quot; He's smiling and looking comical, &quot;but I know there's nothing funny about a Jap&quot;. Sure enough, he brandishes a sword. And then, at the moment of danger, Queenie sits up in bed and greets this enemy. &quot;Hello. As if she'd known him all her life.&quot; &quot;And that was when I woke up.&quot;</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview5">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureAndrea LevySat, 08 Jan 2005 01:38:28 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview5John Mullan2005-01-08T01:38:28ZSmall Island: coincidencehttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/01/featuresreviews.guardianreview18
John Mullan analyses Small Island by Andrea Levy. Week three: coincidence<p>Coincidence in a novel can be the sign of a failed plot or a carefully deployed literary device. We can mock rickety narratives for relying on coincidences, yet recognise that certain accomplished novelists insist on them. Where would Dickens be without coincidences? In a densely plotted novel like Bleak House they alert us to the unexpected connections between apparently distant characters that the novel investigates. Elsewhere they can simply be pleasingly appropriate, as near the end of David Copperfield when David, on a prison tour, encounters the novel's two servile villains, Uriah Heep and Steerforth's butler Littimer, in adjacent cells. Improbably, perhaps, but absolutely naturally they have ended up next to each other as the jail's two model prisoners. </p><p>Dickens's novels are thick with coincidences. Andrea Levy's Small Island involves one huge coincidence. If you have not read the book and wish to be surprised when you do so, stop reading here. For one has to be quite clear about Levy's turn of the plot in order to register the structural significance of this coincidence. As a girl in Jamaica, Hortense loves her second cousin, Michael Roberts. Near the start of the war, he leaves for England to serve in the RAF. Some time later he is lost in action over France. Three years after the war, Hortense comes to London with her new husband, Gilbert. They stay in a lodging house owned by a white woman, Queenie, whom Gilbert met in strange circumstances when he was himself serving in the RAF. Stationed in the Midlands, he one day encountered an old man in a Lincolnshire lane, apparently &quot;soft in the head&quot;. The man silently produced his address on a piece of paper and Gilbert led him to his home, an isolated farmhouse. There he met Queenie, the man's daughter-in-law, with whom he subsequently struck up a friendship. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/01/featuresreviews.guardianreview18">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureAndrea LevySat, 01 Jan 2005 15:56:52 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/01/featuresreviews.guardianreview18John Mullan2005-01-01T15:56:52ZSmall Island: time shiftshttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview22
John Mullan analyses Small Island by Andrea Levy. Week two: time shifts<p>Small Island is a novel divided up in two different ways. First, the narrative is portioned out between its four main characters. Second, it is separated - after a brief prologue - into two time zones. Each of the nine main sections of the novel is labelled either &quot;1948&quot; or &quot;Before&quot;, and we shift back and forth between these two times. In 1948, in a large, shabby lodging house in grey, postwar London, four ill-sorted characters confront each other. Bernard and Queenie own the house; Gilbert and Hortense, newly arrived from Jamaica, live in one of its rooms. The novel gradually unfolds the accidents that have brought them together. </p><p>The unusual chronological structure is integral to Levy's approach to history. The key date, 1948, is the year when the Empire Windrush brings hopeful West Indian immigrants to England. Among them is Gilbert Joseph, one of the narrators. In recreating the wintry England that he discovers, this is a conventional historical novel. But it is historical in another way, for we keep being shifted back from this time to see each character's past. The effect is melancholy. As the four narrators tell their stories, they look back on mostly cheated expectations. Queenie learned elocution and alluring feminine wiles, but found herself married to the utterly dull Bernard. Gilbert imagined himself as an RAF pilot, but served as a driver in different cheerless parts of England. Everywhere he encountered the small-mindedness of his adopted small island. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview22">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureAndrea LevySat, 18 Dec 2004 01:38:28 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview22John Mullan2004-12-18T01:38:28ZSmall Island: speechhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview27
John Mullan analyses Small Island by Andrea Levy. Week one: speech<p>Gilbert, one of the narrators of Andrea Levy's Small Island, recalls how, as a Jamaican RAF recruit in wartime England, he sometimes heard children call out after him: &quot;It speaks, Mummy, it speaks.&quot; This is a novel whose characters are preoccupied with how they and others speak.</p><p>In a Yorkshire village an elderly couple approach one of the West Indian RAF men and ask: &quot;Would you mind saying something? Only my husband here says it's not English you're speaking.&quot; &quot;Can you understand what I'm saying?&quot; the English landlady Queenie absurdly keeps asking Hortense, who has newly arrived from Jamaica, as if different skin colour must imply linguistic incomprehension. &quot;You'll soon get used to our language.&quot; All Hortense's articulacy will not shake Queenie's conviction that she needs a translator.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview27">Continue reading...</a>BooksFictionCultureAndrea LevySat, 11 Dec 2004 16:13:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview27John Mullan2004-12-11T16:13:29Z